Category Archives: About the Blog

Little bit of a change today: I purchased contactlight.net (the .com is being held by a squatter) and turned it into the site’s url. This came after I started to refer to the setting as “Contact Light”. It’s perhaps not the ideal name since it has nothing at all to do with Apollo, but my primary choices were all problematic for various reasons.

I’ve created a twitter account for Contact Light, and also joined the RPGBA. The twitter account will serve almost entirely for automatic notices of new posts, but I may also post short announcements there instead of asides here.

“Contact Light” were the first words spoken by Buzz Aldrin after the Eagle made contact with the Lunar surface. It struck a chord with me, and also fits how I will make light contact with the Traveller system.

As some of you are aware (considering the likely distribution as I write this… most?) I am working on a science fiction setting. I am trying to do things in a more or less systematic way so as to end up with a constructed universe that is both manageable for myself and my audience, and elegant in a way that doesn’t break suspension of disbelief too badly.

After some considerations I have found a set of assumptions and parameters that works well for me, and I found that these are a very good match for an old favorite, Marc W. Miller’s Traveller. This is hardly surprising, considering that I grew up on a diet of science fiction not unlike the mix that Miller used as the basis for Traveller.

However, the setting I have in mind is not a Third Imperium Traveller universe, and I can’t – and do not want to – just use Traveller material. Instead, Traveller will serve as the system that will guide the creation of my science fiction setting. Nothing more, and nothing less. I expect that this system will itself get modified and shaped in the process – because that’s what I enjoy.

Limited Scope

This blog will document the process of creating my science-fiction universe. It will focus on technical aspects, on world-building and on process-, system- and game design. Actual content will be posted elsewhere – I will announce it in time.

Why separate blogs?

I normally post my world-building material over at Enderra. However, I am unhappy with the wild mix of stuff that is in that blog. It lacks focus. Instead of adding to the chaos, I decided to just branch out for this particular purpose. Call it an experiment.

The BBC posted an article about modern designs of research stations in the antarctic. There are some really, really gorgeous designs and these are of course much more practical than ye olde wooden shed.

This was posted on Reddit a while ago; someone created graphics showing what Earth sunsets may look like if our Sun were replaced with another star. I do not know how accurate these images are, but they are surely beautiful:

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet, in the system, J1407b, which is 200 times the size of the ring system of Saturn. There are also gaps in the rings which they think indicate the presence of moons there. The Contact Light setting has got to have at least one gigantic ring system like this!

Ancient Star System

In other news, Kepler has found an ancient planetary system. The system, Kepler-444, is 11.2 billion years old. It has at least five planets – all of them too hot to support life – but it means ancient systems can exist amidst much younger stars. Planets on which civilizations rose and fell long before life even got started elsewhere.